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Courtenay Hameister
October 9, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FreeFrom Broadway Books’s website:
Courtenay Hameister, Okay Fine Whatever
On Tuesday, October 9th, at 7 pm Courtenay Hameister joins us to read from her memoir Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things, published by Little,Brown.
The book tells the story of one chronically anxious woman’s hilarious yearlong quest to change her own timid nature by seeking out the kinds of experiences she’s spent her life avoiding – such as spending the afternoon in a sensory deprivation tank, attending a fellatio class, having a session with a professional cuddler, and braving twenty-eight first dates. The book reminds us that it is possible to become bold, or at least bold-ish, a little at a time. Lidia Yuknavitch calls Okay Fine Whatever a “brilliant testament to the fire of the spirit for misfits and scaredy-pants everywhere.” And Cheryl Strayed says “it’s a rare writer who is as frank, funny, and smart as Courtenay Hameister is on the page.”
Hameister spent twelve anxious years as the host and head writer for Live Wire!, a nationally syndicated public radio show, during which time she interviewed more than five hundred intimidating people and wrote two hundred personal essays in bursts of anxiety-fueled inspiration the night before each show. She studied theater, film theory and women’s studies at New York University before moving to Portland.